Relayed from The National Museum of Wales

National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)

(to 12.45)

The Coney Beach Five
Relayed from the The Dansant Hotel, Metropole, Swansea

An Eye-Witness Account of the Welsh Trial Match at Pontypool

by John Palmer

Lady Cecilia is taking tea with Lady Marion in her drawing-room in Hertford Street

Relayed from The Assembly Room, City Hall, Cardiff

National Orchestra of Wales
(Cerddorfa Genedlaethol Cymru)
(Leader, Louis Levitus)
Conducted by Warwick Braithwaite

The full name of the Overture which is usually called simply 'Molusina,' is really 'Overture to the Legend of the Lovely Melusina, one of the most picturesque of the old French stories.
Listeners will remember how Melusina, the tutelary fairy of the house of Lusignan, imprisoned her father within a mountain in Northumberland, and how she was punished for that cruelty by becoming a serpent-woman-a serpent from the hips downwards-for one day in each week.
Mendelssohn composed it in 1833, soon after his acceptance of the imposing title of 'Music Director of the Association for the Promotion of Music in Dusseldorf.' The Overture begins with a double theme, a rippling figure on the clarinet against a slow moving melody in the other voices.
Both of these persist through a great part of the Overture, although a sterner mood makes its appearance more than once. But the work is throughout characteristic of Mendelssohn s flowing melody and charm.

Weber's clarinet concertnio is a very pleasing example of his melodious and always effective style of writing. Just as Brahms wrote some fine clarinet works for the great clarinettist Muhlfeld, so this and two other works of Weber's were inspired by an earlier great executant, Heinrich Barmann, who was looked up to as the finest clarinet player of his time.

(to 0.00)